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The Necessity of Dark Web Monitoring

September 16, 2019 by securewebsite

Protect your identity and business with a consistent watchdog service

We’ve all read about the constant barrage of cyberattacks on businesses and the nightmare that comes from having your personal identity stolen. There are ways to reduce the odds that your business will suffer such an attack or that your personal information will be hacked. One of the best methods for protecting both your business and your identity as well as that of your family is consistent monitoring of the Dark Web.

What Is the Dark Web?

The Dark Web is just what it sounds like. It’s the shady side of the internet. The Dark Web lays in a sub layer of the internet known at the “Deep Web.” This is a place hidden from conventional search engines where criminals often roam searching for their next victim.

Believe it or not, common search engines including Google, Bing, and Yahoo simply scratch the surface of what is actually available online. Such search engines hunt just .04 percent of the indexed internet. The other 99.96 percent of the web consists of databases, private academic and government networks, and the Dark Web, according to ID Agent, which provides comprehensive threat intelligence and identity monitoring solutions for both individuals and businesses through ORAM Corporate Advisors.

What Threat Does the Dark Web Pose?

Not only is the Dark Web a place that threatens your personal identity but it can endanger your business as well. This is a place where the signature pieces of your personal identity (name, date of birth, stolen passwords, and even social security numbers) can be sold daily to the highest bidder. Everything from your credentials such as email logins, passwords, and usernames can be found there.

With such personal information, criminals can hack your email, your bank accounts, and more. They can open new credit card accounts in your name without your knowledge and rack up untold sums of debt before you’re even aware there’s a problem. The threat of personal identity theft can extend beyond you as well to other family members such as your spouse, your children, and your parents.

The loss of such personal information can be devastating to your business, too. Critical business information such as business applications, email, and other online services can be penetrated with your personal information. Logins and passwords can be changed, business information can be accessed and stolen, and your organization can be brought to a complete halt with the personally identifiable information (PII) bad actors are hocking on the Dark Web. Read the ORAM blog “The Dark Web: What It Is, How It Impacts Your Organization, and Ways to Protect Your Business” for more detailed information about the severity of the threat your business faces as a result of the Dark Web.

Protecting Yourself, Your Family, and Your Business

The most effective way of protecting your PII, your family members’ PII, and your business is through Dark Web monitoring. ORAM uses SpotLight ID, which employs Dark Web ID, to monitor your identity and that of your covered family members. Through leveraging Dark Web ID, ORAM focuses on the cyber threats specific to you and the environment you work in. Our proprietary software continuously monitors the Dark Web and the digital criminal underground to determine if our clients’ credentials have been exposed.

With SpotLight ID, ORAM searches for your personal information on the Dark Web. If found, your data is harvested to protect it from typical hacker sites such as Pastebin. Many such sites frequented by cybercriminals require a membership and credibility to enter. Our monitoring system allows us access to search more than 500 internet relay chatroom (IRC) channels, 600,000 private websites, and 600 Twitter feeds utilized by bad actors.

Furthermore, SpotLight ID executes 10,000 queries daily to help monitor and protect your identity and those of the people you love. We also monitor and source information from hidden theft forums, peer-to-peer file sharing programs and networks, and social media. We can even find compromised data harvested through botnets and command and control (C2) servers.

Be On Alert

If your information is identified on the Dark Web, we notify you immediately. This allows you the opportunity to change your logins and passwords before cybercriminals can take advantage of the information they have. This also gives you time to consult with your business’s internal or external IT team as soon as possible to determine if a data breach or cyber incident has occurred using your credentials. Such monitoring and notification can buy your business the time it needs to change your username, login, and password before cybercriminals can strike against it.

In addition to monitoring the Dark Web for your PII, ORAM will alert you if someone actively targets you or your covered family members’ social media profiles. You’ll also receive instant updates, alerts, and access to your credit from all three major credit bureaus if something changes with your credit or that of your covered family members.

Monitoring of the Dark Web also gives you peace of mind that your identity and that of family is covered. With a team of U.S.-based Certified Identity Restoration Specialists, ORAM will work to completely restore your identity should the worst happen, even if the issue began before you enrolled for coverage. You can take even more comfort in knowing that with SpotLight ID, you have up to $1 million in identity insurance to cover related restoration expenses if needed.

If you are interested in learning more about SpotLight ID or registering in one of our affordable and flexible plans, contact ORAM Corporate Advisors online now or call us at (617) 933-5060. The cybersecurity experts at ORAM are here to protect you, your family, and your business from the threat of cybercrime.

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The Modern Office: Why a Strong IT Foundation Should Be the Basis of Your Business

August 27, 2019 by securewebsite

Business builds itself from the ground up. Your business internet technology (IT) is no different, which is why your foundation is so critical. The modern office revolves around having strong IT in place. From communications to automated business processes and protecting valuable company data, your foundation is imperative to your organization’s ability to not only thrive but survive.

Without a strong foundation, your business risks everything: Being hacked; watching valuable data be stolen, held ransom, or destroyed; and experiencing crippling downtimes when systems fail to function properly, costing your organization money every minute your employees can’t function. A strong foundation will help protect your company from experiencing such destructive problems and allow it to keep functioning smoothly even through inevitable IT bumps in the road.

What is Foundation in IT Terms?

At ORAM Corporate Advisors, we view the foundation as the nuts and bolts of your operation. We consider that to be your firewall, your switches, and your wireless access points. This is the core of your network. These are the things that have to be 100 percent reliable all the time and what literally makes the world go round for your business.

Firewalls as a Gateway

The gateway in and out of your network is your firewall. When it comes to the network security of the modern office, the firewall is your first and best line of defense. It monitors and controls both incoming and outgoing traffic on your network based on the security rules set for it. What rules are employed depends on how your company operates, the security it requires, and industry regulations. The best firewalls are “smart firewalls” which are capable of configuring, monitoring, and managing network traffic on the fly.

An average firewall is a hardware device or even a software program that is a barrier, a wall, between your systems and network and the internet. Its purpose is to limit unnecessary communication between your computer network and the internet.

Smart firewalls offer much to your business in terms of additional protections. Today’s modern office should employ smart firewalls as they include:

  • Antivirus, Antimalware, and Limited Spam Filtering
  • Deep Packet and Stateful Inspection
  • Packet, Adjustable Content, and “Default to Now” Traffic Filtering

The IT experts at ORAM can configure your smart firewall to maximize its protective benefits for the specific needs of your business. This ensures there are no gaps or vulnerabilities in your security settings that could allow a hacker to infiltrate your business system. We also take the time to keep your firewall current and patched.

Switches: Your Business Connection

Network switches are another important piece of your modern office network. This is the link, if you will, that connects devices on your network. It’s the switches that receive, process, and forward data moving in and out of your network so that it arrives at its proper destination.

The most common switch among business networks is one that handles Ethernet traffic. That is to say, the switches that connect your business to the internet. Without such switches, your business would become a proverbial island and your business data from email to invoicing may not function properly.

In addition to traditional managed switches, “smart switches” are an evolving option that can offer some management and security. They can be cost-effectively used in large networks as a supplement to managed switches or can be included as the main infrastructure in smaller networks. Smart switches can allow your business to segment its network into workgroups by creating a virtual local area network (VLAN).

Wireless Access Points

Wireless local area networks, or WLAN, are created by using a wireless access point device. These WLANs are typically found everywhere from homes and restaurants to modern offices and large buildings. They provide wireless access to the network for devices such as laptops, printers, and cell phones in a designated area such as your office. This enables your employees and customers to stay connected on a secure wireless network that is isolated from the core network in your office. You can also open or limit wireless guest access to specific applications or times of the day.

Recommended Foundation Hardware

The foundation of the modern office is also cloud-based. This allows you to know more about what your end users are doing and how traffic is flowing. Traditionally, you’d have to look back through logs and that is a time-consuming process. The modern office can’t afford to sit idle while the IT staff sifts back through logs to determine where things went wrong. Smart firewalls, switches, and access points provide real-time information through cloud-based systems that allow us to make the best decisions with up-to-date information.

At ORAM Corporate Advisors, we recommend using Cisco Meraki for all of those devices because it’s one of the most reliable cloud-based systems to date for business networks. This is important because it is the foundation of your business. User management, connectivity, and the like don’t matter if you and your employees can’t even access the internet.

Without a strong foundation, your business floor will drop out from beneath you. Commerce, trade, and services for your organization will come to a screeching halt without a strong foundation. Though integrating a strong network can be costly, it is the most important investment you will make to keep your business moving forward.

Ensuring a Strong Foundation

There are several key components to developing and maintaining a strong IT foundation in the modern office. Those include the following:

  • Make sure your firewall(s), switches, and wireless access points are current, up-to-date, and are running the latest firmware.
  • The hardware needs to be current as well. Is it still being supported and warrantied by the manufacturer?
  • Can your network handle your current business needs and still allow room for growth?

For everything you do or that your employees do, your foundation is key. By ensuring that you have the major components from your firewalls to switches and wireless access points in order, you can keep your business moving forward smoothly at all times. If you need assistance with building or bettering your business foundation, contact ORAM online or call us today at (617) 933-5060.

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